Ancient Evil (The First Genocide Book 1) (17 page)

It
was Raisin Sunday and there were about forty people in their flat.

Finn had let slip to Jonni that he had
managed to get some freshers to ask him to be their academic father. Jonni had
not said anything at first, but Finn could tell by the expression on his toad-like
visage that he had made a mistake.

Neither of them mentioned it again and Finn
hoped that Jonni had forgotten the whole incident.

Finn’s hopes were dashed when he answered
the door at three in the afternoon on Raisin Sunday and found a strange girl in
glasses holding a bottle of wine on their doorstep. Not to say that she looked
strange or weird, he just didn’t know who she was.

“Is my dad here?” She handed him the bottle
of wine and started to push past him. The traditional Raisin Sunday gift from academic
child to parent had morphed from a pound of raisins into a bottle of cheap wine
sometime in the 1970s.

He did not move out of the way. She tried
to wriggle past him without coming into contact with him. “Who?” he said.

“My academic dad, you know the funny-looking
little bloke with a goatee or a mustache? I can’t remember his name but he said
this was where I was supposed to meet him.”

“Jonni?”

“Is that his name? That’s funny, like a
jonni. Are you going to let me in or what?”

He stepped aside.

Over the course of the next hour Finn let
in twenty-five more of Jonni’s academic daughters, as well as his own meager
brood.

When Bex arrived she didn’t say anything;
she just shook her head sadly and walked past him into the party. Inside he
could hear Jonni lecturing his academic daughters about the benefits of academic
incest, to giggles aplenty.

Over the course of the night various other
people wandered in, drawn by the music and laugher.

Finn and Bex decided to take their parental
responsibilities seriously and walked both their and Jonni’s academic children
home once the party wound down.

Most the academic children lived in halls
of residence in the town center, so it was not much of a chore to drop them
off. His and Bex’s two academic sons lived in Hepburn Hall, which was not far
from Old Hall, where Bex lived, so at the end of the night Finn found himself
walking home on his own after seeing everyone else home.

As he rounded a corner a few streets away
from his flat, he could see two figures on the sidewalk ahead. One was sitting
with its back against a wall of a shop with its legs stretched out into the
sidewalk. The other figure crouched beside the sitting figure.

As Finn approached, the crouching figure
stood and faced him. She was a striking blond with a crew cut. He could not
tell the exact color of her eyes under the orange street lamps, but they
appeared to be light.

“This one does not look so good,” she said.

He had trouble looking away from her eyes.

He forced himself to look down. The sitting
figure turned out to be a drunk red-headed boy or, as Jonni would say, a
“ginger,” where he pronounced the g’s in the hard fashion such as in “girl”
rather the soft manner such as in “giraffe.”

The woman was right. He did not look good;
there was a trail of vomit down his shirt front and pooled between his legs.

Finn looked around. “There should be a puke
mobile around here somewhere.”

“A what?” she said.

“Not from around here, are you?” She did
not reply. “During Raisin Sunday the Student’s Union sends around a minivan to
pick up poor buggers like this and take them to the hospital to get their
stomachs pumped.”

“And you call this minivan a puke mobile.
Very droll.” She quickly stepped up to him and breathed deeply. He stepped
back. He thought he heard her murmur, “Strong,” but he was not sure.

He looked around and saw a van turn the
corner he waved at it. The van pulled up to the sidewalk.

He turned back to her, but she was gone. He
must have been more tired than he realized, or drunker.

He opened his eyes. His head hurt. He must
have drunk more than usual. He had thought that he had inoculated himself
against hangovers earlier that year through daily visits to the Union.

He tried to sit up but was unsuccessful.

His vision was not complete, like something
was covering his left eye. He swiveled his right eye around the room. He saw a
TV suspended from the ceiling. To his right he could hear intermittent beeping.
He swiveled his eye down and saw a bandaged arm with an IV sticking out of it.
Where the IV was inserted the bandages had separated slightly. He could see red,
blistered skin.

A nurse entered the room and she looked
tired.

“Where am I?” he croaked out.

“No need to worry; we are taking good care
of you.”

“What happened?”

She did not answer. She leaned over to tuck
in his blanket. As her hand passed near his bandaged mitt, he managed to grab
her hand. She looked up at him and he saw his reflection in her eyes.

He could feel his heartbeat accelerate,
until his pulse was pounding through his body like the bass line at a Red Hot
Chili Peppers concert. The beeping accelerated with his heart, until it went to
a continuous extended beeeeeep as the pounding stopped.

The nurse extracted her hand from his and
ran for help.

Finn sat up, sweating.

He took a deep breath and tried to calm
himself as he felt the rapid beating of his heart in his chest.

This was the worst nightmare to date. He
had changed from the observer to the victim.

He curled into a fetal position and tried
in vain to get back to sleep.

The town was a surreal purgatorial vision
the next morning.

From his doorway he could see a faint glow
of the sun through the thick fog.

A Viking loomed out of the fog, groaning as
he labored down the foggy road carrying a tractor tire.

He saw a cowboy retch as he pulled along a small
wooden horse on wheels.

He saw a fairy princess gently carrying a
condom that may have been full of porridge. Finn hoped it was porridge.

Raisin Monday had arrived.

All the academic children who could get out
of bed had been dressed in costumes made or bought by their academic mothers.
They then went to their academic father’s house, where, if they could get him
out of bed, they were presented with a raisin receipt.

The raisin receipt could be anything, as
long as it was inscribed with a specific Latin phrase, hence the tractor tire,
the wheeled horse and the porridge condom. Many items “disappeared” from the
town during the weeks running up to Raisin Monday as diligent academic fathers
obtained memorable raisin receipts for their academic sons and daughters.

Finn had chosen not to steal anything, but instead
he had bought stuffed bears for his girls and wooden ships for his boys. Jonni
had selected nothing; he was not going to provide raisin receipts to any of his
academic daughters. He was sulking, as none of them had engaged in academic incest
with him.

At about nine thirty, Finn saw his academic
children materialize out of the fog. Bex had outdone herself. They too were
Vikings; however, she had also created a cardboard longship for them to carry
along with them. They all looked pretty shitty — pale and tired.

He presented them their raisin receipts and
watched them disappear into the fog on their way to the Quad, where eggs, flour
and shaving foam awaited them. He went back inside and back to bed. He could
use some sleep. No actual academic work happened on Raisin Monday.

Later, he would give Bex a call and see if
she wanted to meet for dinner.

“I
can’t take it anymore,” said Bral, “I am dying in here, I need to leave.”

Hael’s little brother was upset, again. He
hated to append the “again” but it was true. He kept telling Bral he just
needed to thicken his skin and not react to the other boys teasing him. He had
been a target for the other boys ever since Samael had moved on, and moved on
again. Hael had told Bral he needed to socialize with the other boys, but Bral
had closed himself off from everyone. Really, a year should have been enough
time for him to find himself a new friend, or a new companion.

“Bral, we’ve had this conversation before,”
Hael started.

Bral interrupted him. “No, this is
different; it is unbearable, truly unbearable.” Bral sat on the edge of Hael’s
cot and winced.

Hael was in his final year in the Academy
and it looked like he would remain One until he graduated. He knew all his
peers intimately, every strength and weakness, every quirk and preference and
he knew he surpassed them all. More importantly, they knew him just as well as
he knew them. None would be challenging his position this year.

As One, he was entitled to his own room and
some meager possessions. After six years in a communal barracks it was an
unbelievable luxury. It was also incredibly lonely. So lonely, in fact, that he
had been happy to see Bral even though he knew the visit would include multiple
complaints and hand wringing aplenty.

“What’s wrong, did you get in a fight?”
Hael asked.

Bral put his face in his hands and started
sobbing.

“Oh, Bral, what’s wrong, it can’t be as bad
as all that, can it?” Hael was worried now. He knew Bral was being teased. Hael
had tried to provide him some protection and he had hoped things would have
improved once Lucan had graduated. Lucan had actively encouraged the teasing
and had occasionally led it. “Did someone beat you?”

“Someone, someone! All of them! They held
me down and …” he trailed off and started sobbing again, pulling in huge gasps
of air as he tried to breathe.

“And what, what did they do?” Hael did not
want to know. He really didn’t but he needed to know.

“They r-r-r-raped me. They raped me with
the hilt of my sword.” Bral let out a wail then clamped down on it, terrified
someone would hear it through Bral’s door. “And, and, and,” he paused and took
a deep breath and continued, “And they all laughed afterwards and called me a
coward and a catamite.”

“Oh Bral, I had no idea it had come to
this. Who was it? Who was the instigator? Someone must have been the leader.
Tell me.”

“You cannot tell the Marshals; they said
they will do it every night if I tell. They won’t expel all of them. It will be
easier to cast me out.”

“Bral, look at me. I promise you, I will
not tell. But you need to trust me with the name of the leader or this will
happen again and again and again. Silence will only seal your fate. Who was it?
Was it Samael?”

Bral looked up and nodded once.

“Thank you for trusting me, Bral. Leave it
with me. I will send a message. They will leave you alone. I swear on the Debt
that they will.”

“But what, what about when you leave? I
have another two years in this abyss.”

“Listen to me Bral, my message will be
heard and its effects will be lasting. After I deal with this, say nothing
about it. Do not claim responsibility but do not appear surprised either. Make
them think you dealt with this, but do not admit it. If we keep quiet the
Marshals will not be able to prosecute us. They like Samael no more than we do.
I know they see him for the grasping parasite that he is.”

As Bral was leaving Hael said, “Keep a
blade ready in case they come for you before I have time to act.”

“Get out of bed, you lazy slug.” The
prefect’s shout did not even cause Samael to stir. The prefect was annoyed; he
was often annoyed. He considered laziness the grossest of infractions, as he
was never able to indulge in it himself. He reached down, grabbed Samael’s
blanket and pulled. The blanket came up with a sound halfway between a slurp
and a rip. It felt sticky.

Samael flipped out of his bed and landed on
the opposite side of the bunk from the prefect.

That was when the terrible stench hit the
prefect, a wall of gaseous feces and some other smell mixed in that he could
not immediately identify. The prefect was disgusted. The bastard must have
soiled himself.

The prefect waited a few seconds, fuming,
waiting for Samael to jump to his feet, so he could knock him down again. When
Samael did not rise, he came to the realization that something was seriously
wrong. The prefect rounded the bunk and looked at Samael. He then glanced down
at his hands, they were crimson. The blanket was soaked with blood as well as
shit.

He turned his head and shouted. “Call the
Marshals, boys, we have a fucking shit storm on our hands.”

“So let me get this right, you did not
notice the sword blade jammed up his anus until you flipped him out of his cot.
Is that what you are telling me?” The prefect nodded. He was a Nineteen. All
those ranked Twenty and above in year five and six also served as prefects,
keeping the younger and lower ranked boys in order for the Masters. Mi Donta thought
the boy’s family must have paid someone off to get him to Nineteen, as he
seemed to be particularly dim. Bribery was strictly forbidden, but hard to
detect. As with anything forbidden, unless people thought there was a good
chance of getting caught, the practice would thrive. Usually a boy’s family
paid off another boy’s family to lose in the arena or to score poorly in some
other challenge, so that their own son could advance. There had even been an
instance a couple years ago where bribery failed and one boy’s family had
kidnapped a member of a rival’s family. That attempt to influence the rankings
had come to light when the young girl who had been kidnapped died. The
kidnapper’s line had been ended. Donta seemed to recall that most of them had
been sent to work on the New Prime Temple — the Mason Curse. They would all be
dead by now. Building was hazardous work.

“And no one knows how said sword became
lodged in Samael’s anus. No one was woken by a struggle or a scuffle or even,
say, his screams of agony as someone pushed a sword into his bowel and left him
to bleed to death in his bed. Is that also correct?”

“I’m sorry, Mi Donta, I don’t have any
answers. It’s a puzzler.”

“A puzzler. I see. Tell me, what are your
main responsibilities as prefect for this barracks? Can you refresh me? I have
not looked at the regulations for a few years.”

The prefect closed his eyes and
concentrated, trying to remember the exact words. Donta sighed. Bribery had to
be the answer for this one being ranked so high; he really was an idiot.

“A prefect’s duty is to ensure all the boys
in his care behave and do not breach the Academy regulations. A prefect’s duty
is to ensure there is a safe, conflict-free environment for the boys in his
care to rest and recuperate after their lessons.” He opened his eyes and
smiled, proud of himself for remembering the words verbatim.

Donta stared at him. The boy’s smile
started to falter.

“Tell me, does having a boy disemboweled
indicate a safe and conflict-free environment? By the Emperor’s shaven right
nut, do you think that sticking a sword up someone’s arse breaches the
Academy’s regulations?”

“Well, sir, I have my regulation book over
at my bunk, let me –”

Donta cut him off, “Let me give you a clue,
boy, the answer is no. One is not allowed to stick two feet of sharpened bronze
in another’s boy’s arse. It is against the regulations to kill another boy
whether by a sword in the arse or by decapitation or by poison or by any other
way you little shits can think of to kill each other. You will be demoted to
Last effective immediately. Now get out of my sight and send in one of the
other boys.”

The prefect’s mouth was moving but no words
came out.

Donta shooed him away with his hand; this
was going to be a long day.

Even half trained, the fifty other boys who
bunked in the same barracks as the dead boy were all capable, strong young men.
They would not have been accepted otherwise. Whoever had killed Samael had
managed to keep them all from waking, a tremendous feat of Compulsion. His
interviews so far had ruled out the boys covering up for someone. One or two of
them may have been able to get away with a lie, but there was no way that the
twenty or so he interviewed so far could have all lied convincingly. Based on
everything Donta knew about the boys bunking in Samael’s barracks it was pretty
obvious that none of them was strong enough to Compel the others to remain
sleeping while he murdered Samael. There were a couple of real talents, but
none that strong.

He heard his next interviewee come in. He
looked up and saw Bral.

Bral, Hael’s brother. The pieces fell into
place.

Donta ended the investigation after a few
more interviews. His official finding was that Samael had been sexually
experimenting with the sword, when his hand had slipped. Samael had been
mortified and so had not called for help. He had preferred to die than live as
the butt of his peers’ jokes.

No one believed the story, which did not
matter in the least — it was the official version so it was accepted. The
Academy arranged compensation for the boy’s parents while not acknowledging
negligence in the affair.

The rest of the boys in Samael’s barracks
did not sleep well for weeks, knowing that someone could murder them in their
sleep with no one knowing. Except for Bral; he slept like a baby.

“Hael is the one we have been waiting for.”

Zabab –> Donta:
Well, I will admit
that my concerns about him not being ruthless enough appear to be unfounded, if
you are right about him murdering that Samael boy. He may be the one we have
been waiting for.

Donta and Zabab were again in Zabab’s
chambers. It seemed that they always met in Zabab’s chambers these days. Zabab
claimed that, as his chambers were larger and better appointed, they would both
be more comfortable there. Donta knew that this served Zabab’s purposes in two
ways. First, it made Donta the supplicant, putting Zabab in a position of
power. Second, it was a reminder that Zabab’s rooms were larger and better
appointed. Donta was well aware of the power games, but he never acknowledged
them. He needed Zabab, for now.

“May be the one. You are joking, right? How
can you not be convinced? Have you not been paying attention? He was able to
keep the entire room asleep while he dealt with that boy. I have never heard of
one of the Guest exhibiting that high a level of Compulsion. Not without the
use of a Lens. It would be a stretch for a Host Adept.

Zabab –> Donta:
Let’s not get carried
away now, Donta. Maybe it would not be the easiest thing for one of the Host to
undertake, but a “stretch,” that is taking things too far.

Donta was constantly surprised at how petty
Zabab was. As one of the leaders of the Enlightened Party, you would think he
would exhibit a little less of the typical Host superiority and prejudice
against the Guest.

“I also uncovered some hints that the
victim had led a sexual assault on Hael’s younger brother on the day of his
death. It looks like our candidate considers himself a righter of wrongs. That
should be useful for steering him, as he does not seem particularly interested
in the usual rewards.”

Zabab –> Donta:
Yes, yes, most
interesting.

Zabab rudely projected boredom and
impatience in his mental sending as he stroked the powerful ruby Lens on the
pommel of his sword.

“Am I keeping you from something?”

Zabab rubbed his knuckles. They were
scraped and bruised. His eyes flicked to the side towards the heavy wooden door
barring the way to his sleeping chamber.

Zabab –> Donta:
No. Nothing you need
to concern yourself with.

It appeared that Zabab had not become bored
of having his own personal Nightfeeder in the four years she had been bonded to
him. Donta shuddered a little inside to think of what that creature must have
endured in that time.

Donta would tear it all down and rebuild
with whatever tools were available. It mattered little whether the tools were
as pristine and shiny as Hael or as flawed and twisted as his colleague Zabab.

He left Zabab to his hobby and returned to
his quarters to plan for the next stages of the revolution.